Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/134



The Thermal Wonderland—Rotorua—The Haka and the Poi—A Strange Outdoor Kitchen—Whakarewarewa's Geysers—Pantomime in a Maori Cooking Reserve—Wonderful Hamurana—Gloomy Tikitere—The Long Swim of Hinemoa—The Cold Lakes

the South Island the traveler is fascinated by ice and snow. In the North Island he is awed by fire and steam.

In the north, from Ruapehu's snows to Ohaeawai's tepid springs, full three hundred miles away, is a violent, vaporous land. It is ulcerous with turbulent, nauseous mudholes, and scabby with the white sterility of silica. Earthquake tremors frequently shake it, and it throbs with the pulsations of subterranean boilers. It has steaming lakes, pools, and streams, healing baths and springs, acidulous basins of emerald, opal, and orange, and tinted terraces of sinter. From smoking crater come deadly gases, and on mountain-top is heated turmoil amidst snow and ice.

Here are thermal islands in the sea, and buried villages ashore. Here, in this warming-pan, this outdoor kitchen, are roaring steam vents, simmering shallows and sweating sulphur. In populous centres, in untenanted swamp and manuka waste are plutonic vapors, infuriate mud, and spouting water. In this realm of hidden fires are clear, cold lakes in the shades of lovely forests.